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Open Source Zine Project

For years the chains of copyright and what’s considered “Serious Culture” make most people have little to no freedom when it comes to artistic creation. One of the greatest limitations imposed on creative freedom is about identity.

Identity is a obsolete concept – besides being stupid – that’s fated to failure in the internet age. In this sense, “Discordja!” comes as an open-source zine, where the identity of the zine can be used by anyone willing to create. That being said, it can exist 23 zines with different content (or not), created by different people, each one with a different editorial policy.

Discordja! is a name that refers to an international zine with multiple origins. Being a name open to any artist or free thinker who wants to use it as their medium, to say and shared content. The idea is to create an ‘open-source zine’ for which no one in particular is responsible. It is a way to practically examine, and break down, western philosophic notions of identity, individuality, value and truth. But, we consider that those who propose that radical, if not mundane analysis may possibly be drug-crazed guerilla ontologists pretending to derive meaning from the chaotic neuronic discharges of primal anxiety engendered by information overload.

To organize the zine, without centralizing it on a single community, and making it still look chaotic enough, we decide to make an abstract concept of community. The Community/ies – with upper case T on the and C on community – is just a way of calling a community who embraced the idea of the zine, and is producing one, be a facebook group, a VK group, a channel on IRC, a subreddit or even a group of friends who meet AFK to debate on how to produce the content. Following this idea, The Community/ies is not a single community, but a multitude of communities who work together (or not) to produce any type of content.

In any rate this zine could be called anything, even the most stupid of names, like “SMILE” or “Tudismo”. And it could be only about one unique matter, like discordianism or Hyper-Surrealist Meta-Discordian Post-Neoism Groucho-Marxist Conspiracies and Politics. To make things clear, we decided to create a framework – and being original and creative people we are, we named it “The Framework”, with upper case letters – this framework is not a set of rules, neither is imposed to any Editor. The Framework is a statement of the (anti)identity of the magazine, we encourage plagiarism, community work and deprivation of one’s identity.

All of these concepts are old, and were worked on by Neoists and non-artists of the working class in the late 80s and early 90s. But in the age of internet and fast-paced information, those concepts could be put to use yet again. The idea of a fixed name for a magazine, with different editors and content being published by that name is direct copy of the SMILE magazine. The idea of copying anything from the internet or from the other zines comes from the “People’s Pirate Press”, proposed by Gregory Hill on “Copywrong rip off write on!”.

We could define Discordja! zine in two sentences: “No rules enforced, all rights reversed”

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The Framework:

The Framework is what makes the “Discordja!” zine the “Discordja!” zine. This frame is defined by The Community/ies and not only should, but it needs to be changed over time (or all the time). The Framework should not be strictly followed, and everything proposed is optional, although one may ask her/himself – in a philosophically manner – what makes “Discordja!” the “Discordja!” zine.

0) Your zine needs to be called Discordja!, or any variation of it.

0) a) your zine needs to have only 23 editions, in the end of this editions, alongside with The Community/ies you will decide what the next name of the zine will be – that will follow Discordja!’s Framework, besides changes in the structure are not only desired or necessary, but very welcomed.

0) b) You can stay with the name Discordja!, if you don’t like the name proposed by the Community/ies, the same applies for the Framework.

1) b) In addition, you can gather a group of people close to you and create a new identity, and then start distribute Discordja!s with a new identity.

2) Don’t be afraid of copying content from another Discordja!s or other places of the internet, the destruction of identity implies in plagiarism.

3) Every edition needs to have 5 pages, or a number of pages that added, subtracted, multiplied or divided, resulting in the number 5.

4) The Community/ies have the obligation of changing the rules, to better serve the creative ability and production of each one of us.

4) a) The Community/ies can divide itself, to create different zines with different Frameworks, but all of those coming from the same principle – or the principle of the principle of the principle of the principle ad infinitum.

5) Resources used in the Discordja!s zines can be available in the networks and groups of The Community/ies, to be used in other Discordja!s.

5) a) Resources not shared with The Community/ies can be copied, reproduced and changed without the consent of the original editor.

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Some instructions before you start:

(I) Don’t use your name;

(II) Remember your ego is a regime and is much more dangerous than any entity or organisation in the perceived external world. Remember the external world is a regime and is much more dangerous than any entity or organisation in your perceived ego.

(III) Focus on your awareness, not your mental state.

(IV) Keep your message fnord; the ego wants you to be this and that because this is the soil from which your sense of self identity will grow;

(V) No more helpless/hopeless talk. No more; no less.

(VI) Give support to other ziners of Discordja! and their Discordja! zines;

(VII) Be careful when you spread fake news. Check it. Is it real? Is it lulzworthy?

(VIII) Take care of yourselves. Keep your laser handy!

(IX) Resist the temptation to believe in all this bullshit!

(X) At the end of the day, all you have is your own S.H.I.T., so use it wisely.

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Tools:

There’s a great number of tools you can use in the creation of your zine, those are some recommended by The Community/ies:

Writing:

Google Docs – The Google Docs allow the utilizations of Gifs, and can be shared through public links;

Google Docs – With the provision of public links from google docs, the document can be accessed by anyone on the internet.The inclusion of comments by these people throughout the document helps in possible community changes and collaborations.

Image editing:

GIMP – Open-source tool for editing images

Photoshop – basically the GIMP, but closed source, and that only 1% of the world’s population actually bought.

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The Community/ies:

The Community/ies is the associations of all editors of all Discordja!s zines, which can be one or more communities in one or more platforms, and the editors are encouraged to enter and leave of all communities, is they wish to do so.